She forgot all about it until she saw Carnaby at the breakfast table some hours later. Sometimes the gloom of that meal--never a favorite or convivial one in the English household, and most certainly neither at Stoke Revel--would be enlivened by some of the boy's pranks. He would pass over to the sideboard, pepper-pot slyly in hand, and Rupert, whose meal at this hour consisted of grape-nuts and cream, would unaccountably sneeze and snuffle over his plate. "Bless it, Bobs!" his tormentor would exclaim tenderly. "Is it catching cold? Poor old Kitchener! Hi! _Kitch!_ _Kitch!_" (like a violent sneeze) and the outraged Rupert would forget grape-nuts and pepper alike in a fit of impotent fury. But this morning the dog fed in peace and Carnaby never glanced at him or his basin. Robinette, looking at the boy and remembering where she had seen him last, noticed that he was rather silent, that his cheeks were redder than common, and that under his eyes were lines of fatigue not usually there. "What were you doing on the lawn at four o'clock this morning?" she began, but checked herself, suddenly thinking that if Carnaby had been up to mischief she must not allude to it before his grandmother. No one had heard her. The meal dragged on. Robinette and Lavendar talked little. Miss Smeardon was preoccupied with the sufferings and the moods of Rupert. Mrs. de Tracy alone seemed in better spirits than usual; she was talkative and even balmy. "The work at the spinney begins to-day," she observed complacently, addressing herself to Lavendar and alluding to the rooting up of an old copse and the planting of a new one--an improvement she had long planned, though hitherto in vain. "The young trees have arrived." "But where is the money to come from?" enquired Carnaby suddenly, in a sepulchral tone. (His voice was at the disagreeable breaking stage, an agony and a shame to himself and always a surprise to others.) His grandmother stared: the others, too, looked in astonishment at the boy's red face. "I thought it had all been explained to you, Carnaby," said Mrs. de Tracy, "but you take so little interest in the estate that I suppose what you have been told went in at one ear and out at the other, as usual! It is the sale of land at Wittisham which makes these improvements possible, advantages drawn from a painful necessity," and the iron woman almost sighed. "There won't be any sale of land at Wittisham,--at least, not of Mrs. Prettyman's cottage," said Carnaby abruptly. "It is practically settled. The transfers only remain to be signed; you know that, Carnaby," said Lavendar curtly. He did not wish the vexed question to be raised again at a meal. "It _was_ practically settled--but it's all off now," said the boy, looking hard at his grandmother. "Waller R. A. won't want the place any more. The bloomin' plum tree's gone--cut down. The bargain's off, and old Mrs. Prettyman can stay on in her cottage as long as she likes!"